Kafka is the greatest writer of the 20th century. Hands down.
No one can hold a candle to him.
You say
>J-Joyce! U-Ulysses!
All people discuss with Joyce is his prose, his pretty flowery purple prose. That's it.
Kafka's themes, allegories, allusions, metaphors, etc, these have been discussed endlessly and will be discussed for millennia.
Kafka is the hallmark for 20th century literature and the modernist movement.
>implying it's not Gramsci
>implying it's not Nabokov
>the man who can make you forget you're sympathizing with a pedo bear
>the man who makes you momentarily forget basic morality
>the man whose mastery of the english language far surpasses that of any american or english writer
>the man whose mastery of the english language far surpasses that of any american or english writer
not so difficult when you're born in a master-language country and then you have to learn a shit-language
From Nabokov's Lectures on Literature:
>The greatest literary influence upon Kafka was Flaubert’s. Flaubert who loathed pretty-pretty prose would have applauded Kafka’s attitude towards his tool. Kafka liked to draw his terms from the language of law and science, giving them a kind of ironic precision, with no intrusion of the author’s private sentiments; this was exactly Flaubert’s method through which he achieved a singular poetic effect. The legacy of his work habits can be best described, therefor, as paving the way towards a slower and more introspective manner of writing.
I'm always surprised about how fucking pleb you Veeky Forums retards actually are.
You're like children.
kek
>I'm so deep derp
>I read the Hobbit derp derp
It's Proust you fucker
After a few years of using Veeky Forums, a horrible truth just dawned on me.
These threads and shitposts aren't ironic. They aren't jokes. Someone sincerely wrote that OP, confirmed he isn't a robot, and clicked "Post" while expecting answers/attention. Thousands of times, I looked at threads like these and chuckled slightly, thinking nobody would actually be that dumb. And now I feel like watching a Bela Tarr movie.
this guy desu
Philip K Dick
Shut up poor faggot with a zucchini in the asshole
Why is it a competition they are good in their own ways and provide their own aesthetic.
>he isn't an elitist bastard who thinks he's better than everyone else
ahahahahahaaha.....HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Same person trying to be 2deep4u
tryhard
it's actually hamsun
Na
>Kafka's themes, allegories, allusions, metaphors, etc
Be specific.
You
Me??
this desu
The problem is that most people who make threads are retarded. Or, as the old saying goes, OP is a faggot. They make their threads as stupid as possible because it makes them feel tickled to get as many responses as possible that seem to be directly to them. Moreover, to make a thread on Veeky Forums requires a sort of presumption. The humbler and more intelligent posters more often don't see a need to post a thread about the stupid shit OPs often do, and so more often post in threads rather than making threads.
tl;dr OP is always a faggot, pic related
>he read Kafka in English
>he thinks he understands his greatness
plebs, at least learn German, the most lit language of all.
Shut up
Is it cliche that Kafka is my favourite writer?
Kafka had good ideas but he didn't know how to write.
I wish he had actually finished the trial and castle.
No.
prolly
That's a weird way to spell Hamsun
OP confirmed for never reading Proust. Cute.
Probably right
Obviously they're both doing different things and are fantastic at what they do. Based on your criteria, both can be legitimately placed on #1. I absolutely love Proust, ISOLT is one of the best things I've ever read, and I'm going to learn French just to read it in its original language, but I'd still go for Kafka though. His work is extraordinary and immensely imaginative in order to capture unexplored feelings and thoughts. Whereas Proust uncovered feelings and experience of (common, everyday) human life, Kafka resorted to fantasy of feelings, in a ways that are unparallelled and still remain unique and detailed. Hence, Proust is also more interested in the question of superficiality of life and explores various themes by commenting or analysing it. Kafka never comments and creates a world of ambiguity and nightmare, and is not interested in superficiality of life, but rather irresolvable and insovable Schuld und Strafe, and how modern life and modern apparatuses alienate and destroy you. In Kafka's writing, so much is going on, it can be interpreted in so many different ways, it's ingraspable but never meaningless; it's fascinating and diverse, more so than Proust I'd say. No one is like Kafka, he's on his own, it began and ended with him. On the other hand though, Proust offers things Kafka doesn't like growth, to name just one thing, and no one equaled him at it.
The comparison is so difficult because they're operating on two different planes. What Kafka created with his mastery of simultaneous precision and ambiguity places him at #1 imo.
>Russia
>master-language
Their literature is derivative and it only existed after Pushkin.
this
All I know is that I never feel the need to revisit Kafka, au contraire de Proust.
bump
That's subjective and has to do with your tastes
Being cryptic =/= being good
Who implied cryptic?
Autism
Yes, you posted him already and no one bought it. Fuck off.
Do you seriously think Kafka is cryptic? Are you stupid? Joyce is more cryptic if anything.
>anectodal evidence
Yes he did. Read him in German.
>reads translation
>thinks he has any say on the ability of the writer